Hi Everyone,
This post is for the 411 participants in the MOOC Helping History Teachers Become Writing Teachers. Thanks to many of you that filled out my TEO Survey. Here are the results so far.
We start module two on a high note wrapping up some great conversations from Week 1. We had 119 introductions; 76 conversations posted in writing about writing, 41 discussions about SRSD instruction, and about 51 discussions about detecting plagiarism. I use the number of active discussions to tell me how many of the 411 teachers enrolled in the class are actually participating.
This week, we will start with some videos on providing feedback. These videos are tagged elementary, secondary, and college. Feel free to view the one that would be most helpful to your subject. Don’t feel obligated to watch all three.
We will continue our dialogue about the difficulty in providing effective feedback. There are some short pro and con articles about robo-graders, or automated essay scoring systems, which I hope will spark a spirited, yet civil debate on our discussion boards. Our featured reading is followed by a short, 10-question quiz. Dr. Christian Schunn, who offers a guest lecture on a web-based peer review program has offered to give us complimentary access to Peerceptiv during the course of the MOOC. However, in order to use it we would need to generate some mentor texts and conduct multiple peer reviews as an assignment. I am worried about assigning too much work and scaring people off.
A couple of highlights on the discussion board were from Jennifer Brown, who is trying to wrap her head around why students plagiarize, librarian Lorraine Saffidi who asked “How can students be expected to express in their own words a complex idea they only partially understand?” And Wesley Lohrman, who wrote: “History teachers can work to eliminate plagiarism by requiring students to incorporate a variety of text and push students to analyze what they are reading, compare and contrast text, and build opportunities with the classroom for students to discuss ideas and build their own concepts related to the current history learning targets.”
Overall, I am very impressed with the quality of the participation and I have enjoyed chiming in. It is not too late for anyone to log in and participate in the Week One discussions. Remember, you need to participate in all of the course discussions to earn the certificate at the end of the course.
Tweeted in Class.
Here are some of the interesting items I found on Twitter this week and shared with MOOC participants under #HistRW. These pieces were authored or shared by course participants. Feel free to follow me @scottmpetri and connect with participants from the course.
Why do I have to teach writing in my 8th Grade American History?
http://historywithcj.blogspot.com/2015/01/why-do-i-have-to-teach-writing-in-my.html?spref=tw
World History Teachers Blog: M.A.I.N. Causes of WWI Video
http://worldhistoryeducatorsblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/main-causes-of-whi-video.html
How do students regard feedback from their teachers
http://www.turnitin.com/assets/en_us/media/favorite-feedback/
Interesting Summer PD Seminars
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/2015-teacher-seminars
Charts that help writers distinguish idea generation from idea execution
A non-freaked out approach to the core
http://www.teachingthecore.com/non-freaked-approach-common-core-01/
Revising bit by bit
http://makewriting.com/2014/11/23/revising-bit-by-bit/
That’s it for now. I hope you are enjoying the course. Cheers. Dr. P.
HistoryRewriter 